.SF2 - EMU SoundFont v2.x banks

If you are used to the naming conventions of the Vienna 2.0 editor, then the following small 'dictionary' may be useful:

Awave Studio

Vienna 2

instrument

preset

layer

instrument

region

instrument zone

waveform

sample

Note: A 'layer' in Awave Studio must contain regions with non-colliding key ranges, which doesn't have to be the case of a Vienna 'instrument'. Thus, when reading .SF2 file, Awave Studio may split a 'Vienna instrument' into several layers. Also, if there is any 'Vienna instrument' that is not used by any 'preset', then it simply won't be converted.

Note: There are currently three revisions of the SoundFont 2 specification - v2.00, v2.01 and v2.04. An important property of the format is that all v2.x files are bi-directionally compatible, i.e. a v2.04 file will be read just fine by a v2.00 application (although the older application will 'ignore' the new features added in later file format revisions) and vice versa. Here's what's different between the SoundFont revisions:

SoundFont v2.00 was a nice improvement of the earlier SoundFont v1.x format (.SBK files). It stores instrument parameters as a fixed set of 'generators'. Awave Studio supports all current SoundFont v2.x generators.

SoundFont v2.01 added optional 'modulator' routings, which is a more generalized way of specifying a articulation connections in a synth. Awave Studio supports a sub-set of modulator routings - specifically those that are also supported by DLS level 2.

SoundFont v2.04 adds support for 24-bit waveforms (applications/synths that does not support this will simply ignore the lowest 8-bits).

Awave Studio will write v2.01 files if you select 'PCM 16-bit' as data format, and v2.04 files if you select 'PCM 24-bit' as data format. Note it is not possible to 'mix' data formats - if you want one waveform to be stored as 24-bit, then all other waveforms in the same SoundFont file will have also have to be stored in 24-bit PCM format.